PICMG and Communications Platforms Trade Association Wrap Up First Cooperative Interoperability Workshop

(EMAILWIRE.COM, July 17, 2007 ) BEAVERTON, Oregon –– The Communications Platforms Trade Association (CP-TA) and PICMG teamed up in Chicago during the week of June 11 for their first joint Interoperability Workshop, demonstrating structured testing to industry profiles. PICMG has hosted Interoperability Workshops for its members since the early days of CompactPCI®, but this is the first time it has opened the events to another organization. Previous AdvancedTCA Interoperability Workshops have tested the multi-vendor interoperability of new products designed to the AdvancedTCA specifications. For this event, participation was open to members of both CP-TA and PICMG. As always, testing was conducted in a protected, confidential environment, allowing participants to test and resolve any inconsistencies. Twenty-five companies and 70 participants joined in interoperability workshops, completing tests for thermal, manageability, data transport and other interoperability issues. “The detailed preparation and testing carried out at this latest Interoperability Workshop, continues to help drive AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC and MicroTCA implementations. Resolving interoperability issues early in the design process and in a cooperative environment enables vendors to get products to market faster,” said Joe Pavlat, PICMG President. “We look forward to further cooperation with CP-TA in future events of this kind.”“The Interoperability Workshop generated additional interest in AdvancedMC and MicroTCA that will help CP-TA address the interoperability issues in these areas much earlier than anticipated in our current roadmap,” said Nirlay Kundu, CP-TA Compliance Work Group Chair. “These events are getting us closer to delivering interoperable building blocks based on open industry specifications and ultimately, helping reduce Network Equipment Providers’ integration challenges.” During the event, CP-TA demonstrated its improved AdvancedTCA interoperability test tools. The ATCA-Tester from Polaris Networks tested manageability interoperability while Degree Controls, Inc.’s Chassis Scan and Blade Profiler tested thermal interoperability. Further information for the CP-TA test tools can be found at www.cp-ta.org. CP-TA and PICMG will work together on future Interoperability Workshops. For more information on the next event, visit PICMG at www.picmg.org or visit CP-TA at www.cp-ta.org. About the Communications Platforms Trade AssociationThe Communications Platforms Trade Association is a global organization of communications platform and building block providers whose mission is to accelerate the adoption of SIG-governed, open specification-based communication platforms by certifying interoperable building blocks. For more information about CP-TA, visit www.cp-ta.org. About PICMGFounded in 1994, PICMG is a consortium of more than 450 companies that collaboratively develop open specifications for high performance telecommunications and industrial computing applications. The members of the consortium have a long history of developing and using leading-edge products for these industries. For information about PICMG membership, or to find out how to obtain PICMG specifications, visit the PICMG Web site at

PICMG
Rob Davidson

davidson@picmg.org